A Castle in Fortress Europe
by Shutterbug5269
Summary: VERY AU...Richard Castle and Kate Beckett in WWII Occupied France. Rick is with the OSS and Kate, the leader of a Maquis resistance cell. (my desire to do a WWII story just kinda snuck up on me) Rated T for possible violence language and suggestive themes. Much thanks to Detective Angie for the lovely cover art.
1. Welcome To Fortress Europe

**Chapter One  
****Welcome To Fortress Europe**

April 30, 1943  
02:00 hours GMT  
Somewhere over the South of France

A lone American C-47 transport aircraft bearing the markings of the United States Army Air Corps flew in the dark of night just under the German Radar ceiling. It had followed a squadron of British Lancaster Bombers out of England to mask its departure then dropped to the deck while the German radar was concentrating on the bomber formation. Thus far it had remained undetected as the Luftwaffe night fighters were more interested in the British night bombing raids in Northern France.

Other than the pilot, copilot, and warrant officer, the plane was carrying only cargo packaged for air drop and three men. Captain Richard Castle United States Army Air Corps, (and an agent of the O.S.S.) Lieutenant Javier Esposito and Lieutenant Kevin Ryan, both Paratroopers with the newly formed 82nd Airborne division.

When they reached their scheduled air drop zone for the cargo, the warrant officer opened the side hatch and dispensed the cargo pods out into the night. Now came the hazardous part, the slow climb to the minimum safe parachute drop ceiling which would, unfortunately place them in the cross hairs of enemy radar.

When the green light came on, the warrant officer stood and shouted over the noise of the engines.

"Stand up!"

Castle and his two men stood and grasped the hooks for their chutes.

"Hook Up!"

They affixed the hooks to the static line and made a final check of each others gear in preparation for the next command.

"Go...go...go!"

All three men jumped out the door of the aircraft one at a time, the static line pulling their chutes open as they headed for the drop zone. Almost immediately, the pilot banked hard, away from the drop zone, sending the signal to the British Royal Navy Cruiser in the Channel that the drop had been successfully made before descending for the deck to get back below German Radar.

* * *

They were too late.

A German BF110 G night fighter had detected them and went in for the kill. Opening up from the transport's six o'clock with it's two 20 mm cannon the slow, poorly maneuverable unarmed transport never stood a chance. Castle noted the explosion in the night sky as he drifted toward the ground.

He'd known the man in the pilot seat, Captain Damien Westlake since boarding school, they had joined the Army Air Corps together on Dec 9th 1941 and had only caught up with each other again recently. Castle had actually recommended him for this assignment and now he wished he hadn't.

If he survived the mission and made it home, he knew he would need to go and visit his mother and his wife to deliver his condolences. Until then there was no time for his sorrows, he and his men had a mission to complete, and French resistance fighters to train. Not to mention the ground was closing in on him. In his last act among the living, his Damien had dropped them and their cargo precisely on their intended drop zone. A perfect, textbook drop, just as they had rehearsed it in training three weeks ago. As soon as they had collected and buried their parachutes and drop gear the three of them set about collecting weapons containers holding M-1 Garand rifles and Browning automatic rifles and their assorted ammunition and depositing them in the agreed upon location.

* * *

Half an hour later a woman's voice quietly sang out through the darkness in French.

"Voulez-vous danser avec moi?" _(would you like to dance with me?)_

Castle gave the coded response.

"J'aimerais danser avec vous, madame." _(I would love to dance with you, madam)_

A tall woman of slender build, dressed in dark clothing emerged from the shadows, A German MP-40 in her hands, four Frenchmen carrying various German and military and civilian hunting rifles behind her. She whispered something to one of them in rapid fire French and the man melted back into the forest, presumably to fetch a truck for the munitions.

Castle once again turned toward the woman and asked her the question he had been dying to since she first announced herself.

"I assume you're the resistance leader named Yvette? You don't sound French."

"How did you..." she started to ask, but he had anticipated the question.

"Your dialect is more South of France by way of New York City, but with no trace of bridge and tunnel, that means Manhattan."

She was irritated that he had found her out so quickly, but with the cat out of the bag she may as well be honest with him. When the truck returned and the men with her set to work, she told him the truth.

"Kate Beckett, welcome to 'Fortress Europe'" she whispered.

"Captain Richard Castle, OSS, at your service." he whispered obligingly. Offering his hand, and kissed hers when she took it.

Kate rolled her eyes at him, chewing on her lower lip over his overly romantic gesture in the middle of the woods in German occupied France, but there was something about the man's boyish charm she liked, something that set him apart from the angry, bitter Frenchmen she had been associated with since joining the Maquis. Several of whom had tried to woo her and take her to bed, but none had managed it. She was fixated on the goal of a free France.

The Nazis had murdered her mother, shot her in the middle of the street...and she was going to make them pay.


	2. Enter The Dragon

**Chapter Two  
Enter the Dragon**

Newly promoted SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Wilhelm Von Bracken settled into the the office his predecessor had occupied until only recently. The man had been incompetent at his job. Something that could have been overlooked before the war, but not anymore. He had taken a small problem with a few disorganized partisans and blown it completely out of proportion with his heavy handed tactics. The very same ones that had failed in Poland.

Lining up random groups of people and having them shot in the street was a colossal mistake. Disregarding, for the time being, the death of the American journalist, Johanna Beckett (he had carried out that series of reprisals himself, under direct orders and had personally applied the coup de gras) Which had set off a political firestorm at the time which had only died down when the Americans had been brought into the war by their Japanese friends later that year.

Such actions, especially killing french women had the complete opposite of the desired effect, further inflaming French passions and swelling the ranks of the partisans...the Maquis as they called themselves. Every reprisal set off a new round of activity by the Maquis which was met by a new round of even more violent reprisals. It was silly, wasteful and stupid. Not to mention, did absolutely nothing to stop them.

Thankfully he had been in Germany during the worst of it. After making his assessment, that such tactics were not going to work on the French populace, like they had in Czechoslovakia, clearly known to his then superior officer Obergruppenführer Rudolph Ziegler, an unimaginative thug from the early days of the party, one of the few high ranking holdouts from the SA after _The Night of the Long Knives_ back in 1934. He was removed from duty and unceremoniously shipped back to Berlin to be sent to the Russian Front. The man was a small minded thug, and only knew one way to handle a situation, even when it didn't work.

A chance meeting with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who hated Ziegler with a passion, had spared him from that fate, instead finding himself promoted to the man's personal staff.

After performing a series of services and personal favors for Himmler over the last two years, the last of which had been to personally see to the safety of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during his return from North Africa, he had been promoted to his current rank and personally decorated with the Blue Max for his services by Adolph Hitler himself.

In the meantime, the situation in Southern France had deteriorated exponentially due to Obergruppenführer Ziegler's woeful mismanagement. It would seem that a new Maquis leader had sprung up to make life difficult for him. A woman the French population had come to call La Femme Nicolette Chaleur. There were whispers that she may be one of the most influential Frenchwomen since Joan of Arc.

Ziegler had been removed from his command in Southern France that January, placed in command of a half strength SS Panzer division and sent to reinforce the garrison at Stalingrad. Since the surrender by Field Marshal Paulus in February, he had not been heard from. It was likely that he had come to a bad end at the hands of the Red Army. For his sake, Bracken certainly hoped he was dead. What he had heard that the Soviets did to German prisoners he wouldn't even wish on that small minded thug.

After a spending a couple months recovering from a bout of pneumonia, he learned he had been assigned to fill the position left open, and try to clean up the discipline that had fallen during Ziegler's disastrous tenure. Once the doctors cleared him for duty, he was back in uniform, and on the next train to Paris.

Though pressed, he made few promises that he would be able to completely crush the french resistance in the region. Giving only the reassurance that he would marginalize them as much as possible and pacify the region until such time as more resources could be made available. He was a shrewd, and much more savvy political operator than his predecessor, and new better than to make bold promises he might not be able to keep.

He would, however, deal with this "_Nicolette Chaleur" _woman, and make an example of her. He knew he would have to be careful in how he did so, as not to make her a martyr. Ziegler had already left him with one.

As a matter of fact he had just the man for the job.

* * *

Undisclosed Farmhouse  
Southern France

Most of the next few days for Richard Castle, Kevin Ryan, and Javier Esposito since their successful drop was spent field stripping checking for damage and stowing the weapons cache they had brought along for when the time came for them to begin disrupting Axis operations in the region.

Two of the BAR's and four of the M-1 Garands had been damaged in the drop, and would be cannibalized for spare parts for the others. They would provide quite a punch, along with the Sten sub-machine guns dropped in by the British earlier and the assorted French and German small arms the Maquis had collected and the sizable cache of composition B they had a sizable arsenal at their disposal.

The hard part was going to be getting them to stand down from active operations into a more passive intelligence gathering role until then. Something that Captain Castle was sure was not going to go over well with Kate Beckett, this cell's leader. She didn't just want action, she was out for blood. Getting her to see the bigger picture was going to prove difficult, and directly challenging her authority was not in his mission orders. They were here to train these people, not take over.

Castle alone knew that there was a major operation coming. He didn't know many specifics, made it a point not to know them, actually, knowledge was dangerous in occupied territory. He did know, however, that it was slated to step off next spring or summer. Something to do with Pas de Calais.

He had until then, to get these people trained and ready to disrupt enemy troop movements and make life a living hell on the Germans when the time came for the operation to jump off. Ryan would teach them how to use the explosives to proper effect, and Esposito would handle weapons training and self defense. He was in overall command and would be handling the disposition of any intelligence uncovered. Their activities had only recently settled down enough for him to read the two letters that Damien Westlake had slipped into his jump gear while they were on the ready line.

One of the letters addressed to him was from his wife, Meredith...

* * *

Kate Beckett had been looking everywhere on grounds of the small farmhouse and barn for Captain Castle for most of the afternoon with little luck. Lieutenants Ryan and Esposito had no idea where he had gone, only that he had been last seen reading a letter that had upset him and he had stormed out saying he needed a drink.

This information sent her to the kitchen in the farmhouse, but when she saw no sign of him having been there, she was about to give up altogether, when she heard the sound of glass breaking downstairs in the wine cellar. She drew the Walther P-38 from under her sweater and carefully pushed the door leading into the basement wine cellar open. She was unprepared for what she saw at the bottom of the stairs.

Richard Castle was falling down drunk, sitting on the floor, propped up in the corner of the room, the remains of a partially empty wine bottle shattered on the floor at the opposite wall and two empty ones at his feet, he was working on the cork of a fourth.

Ordinarily she would be disgusted by this display of unrepentant drunkenness. It was why her mother (God rest her soul) had left her father and taken her to France with her back in 1938, when she was seventeen, and told him they would only come back when he had cleaned up his act.

But before she could think less of him, she spied the letter in his hands that had obviously set this off. The one the other two soldiers had mentioned. Esposito had an all-to-knowing look in his eyes, and Ryan had looked honestly sympathetic for the man. Something told her that he had gotten some really bad news in that letter. Her suspicions were confirmed, when Castle finally looked up at her with tears in his eyes.

"She left me, Beckett," he slurred in his drunken stupor, "Meredith took up with some Goddamn Hollywood big-shot producer and divorced me...waited 'till after I shipped out, filed the paperwork through his lawyer...she's gone...couldn't even fucking look me in the eye."

Kate gingerly took the bottle away from him and pulled the cork, somehow producing two glasses. She wasn't much of a drinker, but she instinctively felt that the man shouldn't be alone right now.

"Maybe it's for the best..." she started, only to be interrupted by him again.

"She couldn't even bring herself to stay for our daughter, Kate. Alexis is only five, Meredith just dropped her at my mother's with a suitcase and her dolls and took off." he moaned, passing over a photograph of a smiling little girl in pig tails that made Kate's heart melt. "My poor little pumpkin...she won't understand why her mommy would just up and leave her like that."

_Richard Castle, a loving father? Who knew?_ She thought to herself, almost in the same thought that she really didn't like this _Meredith_ much, the more she heard about her.

She didn't know what else to do, so she just pulled his head to her shoulder and held him when he finally broke. For the first time she saw the squared away professional soldier as a human being. What was happening to him was simply not fair, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.

So she just held him.


	3. Partners

**Chapter Three**

**Partners**

Richard Castle slept fitfully on the bed in Kate Beckett's room in the farmhouse. She sat in the comfortable chair near the bookshelf and watched him toss and turn as he slept off nearly two and a half bottles of wine (the house had been part of a winery before the war) he had consumed.

Every now and then he would moan and whisper his daughter Alexis' name in his sleep and that he was sorry. About what Kate wasn't certain. A self centered mother who didn't seem to care about her? That her mommy left her? That he was gone when she left? All of the above? She only knew that this man's anguish was tugging hard on her heartstrings, a distraction from her mission she could not afford, but found herself wanting more than she wanted to admit.

Something about him had reached out and touched her heart in a way she had never experienced before. She had known, as soon as he had turned those impossibly blue eyes upon her, opened his heart to her and exposed his pain...his gut wrenching guilt and anguish, that she could not bring herself to leave him on the cold, damp floor of the wine cellar. (Something she had ordered done more than once when one of the men or women in her resistance cell had overindulged, she had no patience for drunkards)

She wondered how such a softhearted, sensitive man had not only been recruited into the OSS at his age, but had also been placed in command of such a critical mission where he would be out of contact, even by mail, with the family he obviously adored. Especially now, when it seemed to be falling apart, and likely, unbeknownst to him, had been on the verge of doing so for some time. Didn't they usually select non-family men for these things?

She had had Lt's Ryan and Esposito help her move him here to her own bedroom. She knew that he needed to keep the respect of the other Frenchmen in her resistance cell if he was going to be able to do the job he was sent here for. They would lose all respect for a man who could not hold his wine, or were overly emotional, they had all lost family, yet they were not falling apart over it. To be honest with herself (something she rarely has been in recent years) she truly felt bad for him.

When she had first gotten word through radio free Europe that the OSS would be sending in a team to aid _"Le Femme Nicolette Chelour"_ to train her men in small unit tactics, demolitions and intelligence gathering operations, she had secretly jumped for joy. She told herself privately that she would gladly accept their help, something she had also communicated back to England through unofficial channels (in a handwritten note given to an escaped P.O.W. they had sent back to England)

She had also told herself that she would gladly accept any assistance the allies could offer, but would not allow herself to get too close to anyone they sent. Keep them at arm's length, keep her heart secure behind her walls until she had avenged her mother. Until she accomplished her mission she had no room in her heart for love or for romantic entanglements.

This man however was testing the veracity of that vow. She could almost hear her mother laugh at her and tell her, _"The heart wants what the heart wants, Katie."_

Yes, she admitted to herself, it was nice to be able to speak English again. She had been speaking only French and occasionally German for so long that she had nearly forgotten what English grammar and syntax sounded like. Especially the American English of her native Manhattan, even the bridge and tunnel dialects of Ryan and Esposito had been welcome to her ears.

The fact that Richard Castle had been one of her mother's favorite authors (she had stood in line for nearly an hour at a book signing to get _In A Hail of Bullets_ signed for her mother's birthday) was not lost upon her. However it was the deep, undeniable love he had for his daughter that had leached out of every pore of him, that he usually hid so well under his stoic demeanor and soldier's humor, truly touched her heart and made her want to cry...to let him in. Something she had never been able to do with any of the other men she had encountered since her mother's death.

Unlike her own father, who drank himself into a stupor to escape from his own family, he did it because his wife had left him. Had torn his little family apart and left his little girl all alone in this world. Because he missed his little girl so badly he couldn't stand it. If something happened to him, which under the circumstances was incredibly likely, little Alexis would have nobody. She could not allow that to happen, she knew all to well what that felt like.

She had given in to her curiosity after the two other Americans had left and had read the letter that had caused him so much distress. It had simultaneously broken her heart to read and made her powerfully angry. If she ever met this "Meredith" she would give the selfish, self centered little bitch a piece of her mind.

Preferably followed by a right cross.

* * *

Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito sat inside the barn behind the farmhouse checking and cleaning their weapons in an easy, companionable silence. They were about as unlikely a pair of good friends as could be found in the 1940's.

Ryan was a fresh faced young man born into a large family of Irish cops. His father was a police detective in the robbery/homicide division of the NYPD's 12th Precinct. Before the war he had been well on his way to joining the force himself. It was in his blood.

Esposito was a young man of Hispanic descent who had been something of a punk before signing up for the Army after the Japs hit Pearl Harbor. The judge had given him a choice, military service, or prison and he had made the obvious choice. His father had been a migrant worker, and after he died, he became the sole breadwinner in his place. His mother and his little brothers needed him earning, even if it was fighting in a war, not wasting away in prison. If nothing else, his death benefits would provide for them.

The two of them had been the only New Yorkers in their basic training element in Biloxi Mississippi, and their D.I. Had taken malicious glee in calling them his "Big Apple twins." Though they had initially resented each other, they had bonded over baseball when it had turned out they were both fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers and had actually lived within blocks of each other near Ebbet's Field.

Their bond of brotherhood had been forged in an alley near a dive bar in Biloxi when a group of Italian tough guys had looked Ryan up and down and decided they didn't like his face. In the resulting fight in the alley it had been five to one, which had not sat well with Esposito, so he stepped in.

Back to back they had cleaned house against the cowardly fucks and a bond of friendship had been forged. A bond that had gotten them the rest of the way through basic training, jump school and Toccoa. They had gotten each other through each run up and down Currahee Mountain and through every indignity that then Lt. Sobel could throw at them.

Esposito had shown an aptitude for marksmanship and had been designated as one of the training element's snipers after which many in the unit began to shy away from him, but not Ryan, he was in it til the wheels fell off.

After shipping out to England, when Captain Castle had come looking for two volunteers for a mission he "couldn't talk about" only that the mission came with a promotion to lieutenant. The two of them had stepped forward in near lockstep, neither doubting the other. Out of all of the volunteers, including Lt. Winters, the Captain had selected them. He needed a team, and he got one.

Lt. Winters had his own date with destiny, of that the two of them had no doubt, he was a natural leader. A trait Sobel lacked. Easy Company would need him when the real fighting began.

"I had my doubts at first, Javi, about Beckett," Kevin said, finally breaking the silence, "but what she did for the Captain, considering...she's good people."

"Yeah, chica knows how to take care of her people, that's for sure. Coulda left him down there, some of these other frogs might have." Esposito replied, not even looking up from his rifle.

"Yeah, Javi, he told me about his little girl right before we got on the plane, musta gotten some really bad news to mess up a squared away guy like the cap." Ryan said back, snapping the bolt closed on his weapon.

"Yeah, bro, that was a "dear John" letter if I ever saw one, and he can't even send his baby girl a letter or nothin'." Esposito said back, finally looking up at his brother from another mother.

"We running interference for the cap, then, Javi, til he's back up to speed?" Ryan asked.

"You know it, brother, Beckett too, if these uptight fucks wanna make an issue of it, we New Yorkers gotta stick together, even if they like the Yankees."

"Currahee" they both said in unison. _We stand alone together_

The two of them bumped fists like the boxers they both were. It had become a gesture between them when there wasn't time for words. Like it or not, know it or not, Kate Beckett had just been "adopted" by team Castle. If the others here didn't like it, they could sit and twist.

She was one of theirs now.

_**Author's note** Lt. Richard Winters actually existed. He served in Company E 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. He jumped into Normandy on D-day and distinguished himself as a leader of men from the moment his boots hit French soil. Rising to the rank of Major before the cessation of hostilities in 1945. I could list his accomplishments but it would end up being longer than this chapter. Feel free to look him up yourselves, or watch the HBO Miniseries "Band of Brothers" He died January 2nd 2011. _

_Honor the fallen._


	4. Revelations

**Chapter Four**

**Revelations**

The first joint patrol between Kate's Maquis cell and Richard Castle's OSS team did not go as either of them had planned. They had started out scouting possible drop zones for paratrooper insertion for diversionary assaults in Normandy to pull Wehrmacht units away from the Pas de Calais beachhead. For the invasion to work the Germans would have to be pulled in as many different directions as possible.

The fixed fortifications, mines and other defenses being overseen by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox himself, between Calais and the port city of Antwerp would have to be cleared by bomber strikes or Naval bombardment. Possibly both.

After even a cursory examination of the bocage, Rick was greatly concerned. He felt honest relief that the invasion was going to take place at Calais because these hedgerows would be a nightmare for an invasion force to navigate. They were over five meters tall, thick and nearly impossible to penetrate.

The few reconnaissance photos he had seen gave no indication as to their size, having been mistaken for low shrubbery fences to delineate property boundaries, like the ones in New England. The reality, however was a different matter entirely. A heavy Panzer force could hide behind these things and the lighter Sherman tanks the allies fielded wouldn't see them coming until it was all over. The place was a potential deathtrap.

The Maquis were, of course, hoping for that same protection to hide their meeting of cell leaders to create a more organized effort against the Wehrmacht in France. Kate was there to share the information on the invasion that Castle had been cleared to provide and the request from the Allied powers to scout the Pas de Calais defenses, troop strength,the likely routes reinforcements would have to take in the event of an attack, and the routes of supply and logistical support that would have to be cut.

Kate had told the three of them to stay with the truck they had hidden behind a hedgerow and covered with a black tarp. Unwilling to simply sit and cool his heels, even at Kate's personal request, he deployed Ryan and Esposito to scout the immediate area. When they reported back, the news was grave.

"German weapons platoon, heading straight to the meeting place Beckett mentioned." Ryan said almost out of breath from anxiety. Ryan was solid under fire, but a bit more excitable than his teammate.

"Gonna jump the meeting for sure," Esposito offered gravely, "they'll likely lie in wait, make sure everybody's there then hit em. Decapitate the Maquis leadership and try to take prisoners for interrogation so they can roll the survivors up."

From the looks on their faces he could tell the situation looked bleak. The Maquis leaders were walking into a coordinated well orchestrated trap. One of the resistance cells must have a mole...perhaps all of them were infiltrated. All three of them liked Beckett...she was a hard, woman but she was good people. They couldn't leave her to the Gestapo's tender mercies.

"Agreed, guys it's up to us." Rick replied. With no help nearby and no way to warn Beckett the meet had been burned, they were going to have to rise to the occasion. Do what they were trained for and show them what a small force could do with tactical surprise and military discipline.

"Saddle up, boys, I aim to misbehave."

* * *

They had arrived on the scene shortly after after the trap was sprung. It took all of his discipline and training to keep from forgetting the plan and rushing straight into the fray to rescue Beckett. They had thus far acquitted themselves well...but they were poorly trained partisans with small arms going toe to toe with German Sturmtruppen with machine guns. There was no doubt that they were brave...but they were doomed...unless the three of them could turn the German platoon's flank and annihilate them.

* * *

**Inside the groundskeepers shack**

Kate Beckett assessed the situation and knew their prospects were bleak. Her people had left most of their heavy weapons with the truck and Captain Castle. The best defense for this meeting in the small groundskeepers shack amidst the hedgerows had been secrecy. They had all decided it was better...for France and themselves to go down fighting which was only a matter of time.

They were pinned down in this shack by a superior force employing heavy weapons. Something they all knew spelled disaster for them, poorly trained as most of them were, only one or two former French soldiers amongst the lot of them. It was why they needed Captain Castle to train them.

They would all be dead quite shortly, or prisoners of the Wehrmacht. A fate, in Kate's mind, worse than death. She heard all of the stories of what the Gestapo did to Maquis women. She would save her last bullet for herself.

Until, that is, she heard a voice she recognized immediately shout into the night "Vive la France!" And all hell broke loose.

* * *

**That same instant**

Richard Castle looked at his watch...it was time...he hoped Ryan and Esposito had made it into their assigned positions or this would be the shortest pincer movement of all time. He hefted the Thompson sub-machine gun and pulled back the charging lever.

He had elected to bring the Civilian Police variant of the Thompson on this mission instead of the Army issued one for two simple reasons. First...it was a personal gift from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself (he was a fan) and the second was the fifty round drum magazine. (He had brought five with him and three stick magazines.) It rattled, but that hardly mattered in this situation.

"Vive la France! Vive la liberté!" Rick shouted at the top of his lungs as he opened up on the German position cutting down every stormtrooper in his field of vision in a hail of .45 caliber acp.

Half a second later he heard the unmistakable chatter of a Browning Automatic Rifle from the other side of the clearing. Esposito had opened up. This realization was followed swiftly by the loud rumble of a satchel charge. Ryan had taken out the two machine gunners and their MG 40s, evening the odds considerably.

The chatter of Ryan's STEN sub-machine gun told Castle that he was methodically sweeping his corner of the kill box. The skirmish was over in seconds. The German platoon had not been prepared to be hit from three sides at once with automatic weapons and explosive ordinance. Their plan had been so inflexible that they hadn't even bothered to check their own six o'clock.

The planner of this attack had been far too confident that help would not be forthcoming, which also let Beckett's cell off the hook for infiltration, or they would have swept the hedgerows looking for the three of them before kicking off the attack.

"I thought I told you to stay with the truck!" Kate Beckett snapped at him as she exited the bullet ridden shack, blood on her clothing. She tried to sound angry, but her control was slipping. "You and your men are valuable assets, you idiot, you could have all been k-killed."

Kate had wanted to keep the emotion out of her voice, the fear for his safety, the joy at seeing him unharmed, and the gratitude for his timely rescue, but the wall she had been using to keep her emotions at bay had cracked wide open.

"You're welcome, Mademoiselle Beckett." Rick replied, saluting smartly, a jaunty grin on his face and a gleam of mischief in his eye that he simply could not contain. He looked for all the world like a recalcitrant schoolboy caught out after curfew. He knew the shakes would come soon enough, he had never killed anyone before, but now he was running on adrenaline.

"Thank you, Rick...for saving our lives."

She kissed him on both cheeks, to formally thank him for saving them all. But, when she was sure the other Maquis leaders were not looking she kissed him fully on the lips.

* * *

**The next morning  
an undisclosed location near Dover, England.**

Brigadier General Jackson Hunt, OSS Chief of Station, Europe was looking over the latest Ultra intelligence decoded from Bletchley Park. He had been read in on Ultra almost since the beginning and had been placed in charge of the "dirty tricks" department, as the Brits put it, for Operation Fortitude South.

There were other such departments that handled the deception on this side of the English Channel, but his department handled deceptions taking place in the South of France. Every agent he had in the region honestly believed that the invasion would in fact take place in the Pas de Calais region and if broken under interrogation would reveal that "knowledge" to the enemy. They had assorted missions of otherwise great import, scouting locations both in Pas de Calais and in Normandy to cover this.

Just like FUSAG and the battle plans to invade Pas de Calais, Jackson Hunt existed only on paper.

He hadn't realized whom he had sent to Southern France to train the Maquis and scout the bocage until the paperwork for his death benefits had crossed his desk naming Martha Rodgers as his beneficiary. The man he had sent on a possible suicide mission in occupied Europe was his own son. His son, whom he had only seen once since receiving the telegram announcing his birth on April first 1912.

He had been a young Army second lieutenant, only two years out of West Point when he had been sent to London as the attache to Major Archibald Butt, (whom had been on a secret mission for President Taft) without his young wife who was too far along in her pregnancy to be able to travel.

They had booked passage back to the United States on the RMS Titanic on its ill-fated maiden voyage. Though his superior had elected to remain behind, he knew the intelligence he had collected on the approaching war in Europe had to be safely delivered to the President, and had ordered him into one of the first lifeboats to depart, but told to tell no one what he was carrying.

He knew the moment he had accepted the mission that, had he returned safely home, he would have been branded as a coward, who had fled the doomed liner leaving women and children to die. Denounced in the same ilk as J. Bruce Ismay had been in English society. His family would be forced to bear the brunt of his shame, his son would have grown up a pariah.

So, when he boarded the Carpathia it was under an assumed name amongst the few 3rd class passengers to find a lifeboat. A simple oarsman on the small boat. As such, Second Lieutenant Richard Alexander Rodgers United States Army was listed as lost aboard the Titanic on 14, April 1912. That his body had never been found was not unusual, neither had Major Butt's. It was assumed they died together.

The secretary of war, Henry L. Stimson, assured him that for his service above the call of duty, that his wife and son would be cared for and receive the death benefits of a first Lieutenant and Jackson Hunt had been born.

He had stood in the back of his own funeral procession in Arlington National Cemetery as an empty coffin was removed from the caisson to be placed in the ground, the rifles were fired, his beloved Martha, their infant son cradled in her arms, was handed a folded flag weeping uncontrollably. Seeing her in such pain had broken his heart, but there had been no other way at the time. He could not let them bear his shame, the stigma of cowardice.

Now his son, whom he hadn't seen since he was ten years old in the New York Public library in 1922, was in occupied France...sent on a mission with low survival odds by his own hand.

He would do what he could for him, give Richard the best chance he could for survival. Do his best to see to it that he came out of this alive with his good name and honor intact. He had sent for one of his best men to shadow him, keep him alive if possible. The sins of the father would not be visited upon his son, not while he lived.

A knock on his office door broke his reverie as his secretary opened it to step inside.

"Brigadier, the man you sent for is here." she said in her crisp British accent.

"Thank you Marjorie, please send him in." he replied.

She turned into the small anteroom outside and said spoke to someone out of his range of vision.

"Sergeant Cole Maddox, the Brigadier will see you now."


End file.
